Change of Habit – 28th of October, 2015

It’s been awhile now since my last entry. I’ve decided that from this entry on, I would only post whenever I’m able to make a contribution in Github. Here is my account. Do check it out since I plan to contribute there from time to time rather than give update about what transpired at work here. I plan to make it a habit to push my works there on an every-other day basis so wish me luck since I’m still new to this kind of hobby. Hopefully, I become good at it. This is it. It’s time to make open-source contributions!

Just to give an update at work, we’re continuing to develop the log in feature of our app.

There are a lot of things to learn if you want to become a full-stack developer and one of my weakness would be front-end development. Overall, I am still a beginner and would need to know the dynamic flow of code and the magic that happens using JavaScript frameworks such as AngularJS and Bootstrap. Lately I was also looking for sites that could help increase my skills in front-end development which includes Coursera, Udacity, Codeacademy, EdX and others. I need to invest a lot of time on some if I need to take this seriously so wish me great luck. That’s all. Take care and may all our dreams come to fruition. God bless us all! Good night.

-G

22nd October, 2015

The day revolved around studying portlets and tinkering around JBOSS portal which made me realize the flexibility of portlets which uses dispatcher compared to servlets which is URL path based and most especially in personalization and intercommunication aspects of web development. What’s also nice is that I’ve had my laptop account configured to gain admin rights which gives me access to install any program or tool I need for development. Also, there were a lot of life events at the office such as having our lead back from vacation and a birthday cake treat from one of the tech leads. Later in the evening, I had to sketch out the plan of how our portal controllers will be wired together while considering a scalable and loosely coupled design. Last but not the least, I was able to get a Yify copy (c/o our lead) of Disney’s Inside Out movie that just came out this year which I might watch tomorrow. I almost forgot that I still need to grab a dinner so that’s all for now. Take care and God bless.

-G

21st of October, 2015

This day was filled with email exchanges regarding permission to access on API’s of another team where we also interfaced closely with our test engineer to hasten the progress of the sprint. Along with that, I was able to study further about portlets and explore the capabilities of our JBoss Server Portal container that superimposes several portlets to display. Frankly speaking, looking at the contents of Portlets in Action ebook, it might take quite some time and insurmountable effort to tame and master the nature and minute intricacies of what portlets, controllers, handlers and view resolvers can actually do. On top of that, the one advantage could be that studying the book and codes (provided in another site) already encourages a pattern to follow during development. A disadvantage, though would be that errors and exceptions encountered in JBoss EAP are not well-documented wherein not all errors are readily searched in Google or found solved in StackOverFlow. This needs a lot of work. That’s all for now. Take care and God bless!

Alright sirs! Will do. #ethnicFaces #Filipinas #strikeTheIronWhileIt’sHot #punyeta

-G

20th October, 2015

Our team was able to include bunch of Spring MVC features in our web app including Validation, Exception Handlers and AOP annotations. Aside from that, we were able to discuss how our app should handle session ID’s during runtime and how they will affect logging into and requesting services from internal API’s. Lastly, I was able to read further on portlets and here are some diagrams that are noteworthy to gain expertise in Spring MVC and portlets (Taken from from Manning’s Portlets in Action):

Zubu Chon – pork crackers straight out of Cebu

Multiple tasks of DispatcherPortlet

How ParameterHandlerMapping could translate into calling or annotations which Controller

The latest and deprecated Controller classes shown in a family tree

A typical work flow using a DispatcherPortlet

That’s all for now. God bless and good night.

-G

October 19, 2015

Today, we were sent off from work early due to meteorological warnings from the national weather team, PAGASA. Based on the last storm diagram uploaded on their website from yesterday, the direction of the typhoon is from east traversing to central parts and exiting the north. Hopefully, it’s a correct reading otherwise, we’ll be doomed. But seriously, everyone should prepare for any natural calamities that can hit us anytime. Statistically speaking, more than three heavy or strong typhoon, storms, and/or monsoons can devastate us by flash floods and such every year. I can’t elaborate anymore on what can be a catalyst to this but just have some discipline people of the Philippines, please.

At the office, there were only five of us on one-fourth of the floor area of the entire 42nd floor which means most were either too prepared for the typhoon, or too unprepared for work. Most of the activities today were centered towards learning more about Spring MVC and learning to use portlets. Two of very helpful sources available online would be Manning’s “Portlet in Action” as well as Craig Walls’ third edition of “Spring in Action” which lays down some well-written explanation on various web development concepts based on Spring framework. For now, I’ll continue reading to solidify the understanding on Portlets. They’re quite intriguing to use in my opinion since it’ll test your patience in trying to get a grasp, understand and make them work in the actual coding. Take care, have a good night, stay safe and God bless.

-G

Update: At around 21:52 PST tonight, there was slight earth shake for about 20 seconds. Anyone else in Manila area who experienced this? Hopefully there will be measured findings in Philvolc’s site tomorrow.

16th, 17th, 18th October, 2015

Last Friday, we were able to develop add inter portlet communication that is required for the login feature in our app. Aside from that, we were also able to learn more about technicalities involved in portlet development. Last Saturday was more of family day where we went to my sister’s birthday in Marikina. For today, I read some parts in the ebook Effective Java, 2nd Edition by Steve Bloch and planned on how to progress for most parts of our work in this upcoming week. Here are some of remaining pics taken from last week:

The shyest mascot I’ve seen perform. The person inside is also too thin that his pants need to be pulled up 80% of the time

The Chicken-Spag always sends extra rice an invitation

My youngest sister’s princess-themed birthday party held at McDonalds, Sumulong, Marikina

My two sisters visibly sharing unique and almost opposite personalities

Mom participating in games

Mucho, the affectionate and smelly English bulldog

Our princess beside her Lechon

The Black Screen of Death (?): Dang! A forced shutdown via power button should bring this not-so-mean machine back, up and running

MMOJ Eatery is the quickest on-the-go food option around here. Overall, they have great food and unlimited supply of vinegar for barbecue dipping.

O&B is no question, the leading tech company in the Philippines when promoting software development in Java and Agile methodology. Learn more about them: orangeandbronze.com

This collection includes very impressive must-have Java books, which makes me quite, if not overly, jealous

Even the wall beside men’s urinal in O&B is well equipped with learning tips for Agile. The next six included in the list can’t be found here though; it might be posted beside the women’s toilet (or simply left open ended to encourage resourcefulness)

This guy from Cloud Foundry gave a demo and explained how enterprises should use Microservices and start migrating applications to Cloud

Our team lead appeared in serveral parts of O&B’s video spiel where she was interviewed and shared her ideas about empowering women to get into the IT industry

PayMaya is a revamped E-Money startup that features a “beep” card to act as a substitute in using credit card for online purchase and for avoiding queues in riding the LRT. Most of the organizers of this meetup are working from the same company, too

I also received a free card and have yet to try and checkout which features will be proven useful

That’s all for now. .God bless and have a great week ahead!

-G

Oct 14-15, 2015

The past few days we’be been on focused on preparation for 3rd sprint along with addressing connection issues with internal API’s. We’re trying to make ends meet with how the given stack will fit in the requirements and looking for possible workarounds using other open source tools. So far, I’ve done research on Spring Roo, Spring MVC Portlet technology for web development, AOP, AWS SWF, and Cloud Foundry. The last two mentioned were discussed during the free meet up last Wednesday in the Orange and Bronze office. I’ll be talking about that interesting event as well soon. For tomorrow, we’ll continue on research and development for 3rd sprint. That’s all. God bless.

-G

13th October, 2015

Today, we were able to document the deployment of our app from ground and up which should be straight forward and clear as we still need further details to it. Furthermore, I was able to study and try to understand AOP, Spring Data, Spring Boot and Spring MVC while we deal with backlogs from other team. Anytime this week, we’ll start development for the third sprint as soon as specification with the BA is finalized. Tomorrow after shift at 7PM will be a meetup I’ll be attending entitled “Second Spring and Cloud Foundry Meetup”. That’s all for now. Good night and take care always.

-G

October 11-12, 2015

The title of this blog entry could be misleading since most of the pics I will share here were not entirely part of yesterday but for the previous days:

MOA Arena’s LED display depicting an eye – worst phone camera shot ever

Inside The Arena

While waiting for Lighthouse

Chef Lau’s Crispy Chicken Adobo in Ayala Triangle during one of lunch outs at work

What is DevCon?

Initial introduction to the first speaker

This dude just made everyone awake with his sing and dance rendition of Gangname Style

Here he was again

Again

The horse back riding move

He’d better of focus on dev though IMHO

He had his moment there and we’ll never forget it

Dubbed as Kobe Bryant by the nearest burger place from our house

It’s alright though for 75php

Yin-yang sauce for the legendary nasigoreng dish from Hawkers

Telstra, San Miguel Corporation’s attempt to get into the telco business as well

Magic :The Gathering card game event held at Glorieta activity area

Cold and yummy Korean rice soup from Jugno

The tito and tita’s

Jugno’s menu – a must see and order

Purple and white headed cosplayers participating in the event

That’s all for now. Good night and God bless us all.

-G

10th October, 2015

In the morning, I was able to attend the .NET Code Camp organized by Philippine .NET Users Group (PhilNUG) held in Globe Corporate Showroom along Valero, Makati. Here are some pics grabbed from their official FB page:

The lad with the gray shirt with the ever leaning, cocked posture – that’s me

The visual aid was not seen too clearly given limited vantages in the room

I had to lean back to listen to the speakers while trying to catch up on coding

One of the speakers, John Limjap (MVP) gave the demo for REST and repository coding pattern using .NET

The morning speaker, John Pena (MVP) who gave demo and introduced Windows Universal Apps in .NET

Apparently, Windows has just started moving to open source and IoT in the recent years

Map to the venue

The talk finished earlier than expected though, and I’ve timed it just right to meet my friends in a coffee shop around 6, had dinner in a legit Korean restaurant, and played Wii until midnight:

Great food with great friends

Our tech wiz and batch mate claiming that he could get all his needed focus by surrounding himself with humans

Rockband and Lego rockband

American Idol on Wii

We just had our personal emails punched through metallic tape

Mixing up engineering and arts

Overall it was a great Saturday with friends and the captions are duller than actuality. For this week at work though, we should be able to incorporate different Spring-based capabilities in our API, improve code quality and have it ready for volume testing. That’s all for now. God bless.

-G